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Shaped and Shrouded

Vincent Serbin’s follow-up solo exhibition

STAMFORD, CT -- The Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery is proud to announce the opening of Vincent Serbin’s solo exhibition, Shaped and Shrouded, on Saturday, November 18th from 6 to 9pm.

For this exhibition, Serbin continues his series of canvas works that are an exploration of medium and technique, which he first introduced in April 2017 at the Gallery. That exhibition sold-out completely. Serbin, whose career began with a unique method of photomontage (what he calls the "negative collage"), has developed these pieces over the past decade. The artist’s approach to painting began with an interest in how abstract forms are created and the effect their features have on a determined space. He is interested in pursuing work that is non-pictorial, and free of both cultural context and illusionistic representations. Influenced by artists such as Robert Ryman, Alberto Burri, and Frank Stella, Serbin is interested in the process of art over its realization.

The series of works presented in Shaped and Shrouded is a continuation of this development, wherein the artist has painted abstract canvases of varying sizes and shapes that are then covered over. Ropes and twine pull at the edges and folds make the covering take on the form of a shroud. But instead of holy, they are corporeal. Each canvas conceals and reveals a nakedness of medium, displaying various aspects of the painting behind it, as if these spaces are hidden secrets coming to the surface.

The work represented in the exhibition -- as in his April 2017 exhibition with the Gallery -- appears as a cohesive collection but can be split into four distinct phases of the artist’s evolution with his materials. Works in phase one display a process called “countershading,” where hard-edge fields of shaded color juxtapose with organic areas of layered paint that have been distressed by power sanding. Phase two employs the use of shrouds, wrappings and sewn canvas that are stretched over a sub-painting. Phase three introduces the use of "tie backs," in which Serbin uses pieces of twine or cord to pull back sections of the top layer of canvas to reveal areas of the sub-painting. In phase four, the most current phase that the artist is embroiled in, Serbin further advances the concept of non-rectangular works by joining two standard, rectangular canvases in a manner that creates a non-rectangular shape. With a continued use of shroud-like canvas to construct the pieces, these works are referred to as the “double tie-backs."

Serbin has exhibited extensively around the US including recent exhibitions at the University of Texas and at Pirate Contemporary Art in Denver. His photo works have been widely exhibited and collected by private individuals and institutions such as The Museum of Photographic Arts, The University of Maine Art Museum and the Museet for Fotokunst, in Denmark.